The Duran Podcast
Putin & Xi, preparing for big sanctions war w/ Alex Krainer (Live)
I want to thank you very much. Okay, we are live with Alexander Mercuris. And we are joined by Alex Krainer Alex. I have your information in the description box down below where people can find you. Your sub stack your Twitter. Is there anywhere else that people can plug into your excellent work? Oh, thank you very much. Yes, I have a professional website for where which has my day job topics on it, which is called I system trend following. I system dash T of comm and so anybody who's into portfolio management risk management and trading. They can look me up there as well. I've got that link in there as well in the description box. I will add all those links as a pinned comment as well when the show is over. Everything we're going to talk about today is not financial advice, but we are going to talk about what's going on in the world and in the world economy. We have an interesting important trip from Putin to China as well. And before we jump into the topic, let's say a quick hello to everyone that is watching us on. And on Odyssey on rumble and YouTube and the big shout out to the community on locals, the demand that locals.com. Hello to Peter. Hello to. I think I saw Zareo, I'm not quite sure. I saw you in your Zareo, or Valley S is Valley S with us or just me and you Peter, because just me and you Peter will be moderating the days stream so Alexander and Alex. Let's talk about the world financial system. Indeed, and with whom better to talk about it with an Alex craner who keeps a careful eye on this and has the economic knowledge and the understanding to take us through and explain things and I think the point I get to start with is the trip by Vladimir Putin to Beijing. And it's a very interesting trip as well. Now, obviously Putin and see have met many times over 40 times. They speak on the phone regularly. It is not new that they meet. And yet this time, there is something which is different. And I'll explain what it is briefly, which is the Putin going to Beijing is taking the entire Russian government with him. So, the Deputy Prime Minister, a man called Mantura, who is the Industry Minister, he's going. Both the former and the current Defence Ministers, Shoyuku and Bella Usoff are also going. The Energy Minister, Novak, is going. Lavrov, of course the Foreign Minister, is also going. But note who else is going to. Elvira Nabulina, who is the Chair of the Central Bank, Anton Silwanov, who is the Finance Minister. Now, in trade talks, you do not usually take the Chair of your Central Bank with you. So, clearly they're not just talking trade issues. They're talking other things. Now, Putin, before he went to Beijing, gave a very interesting interview to the Chinese news agency, Xinhua, which is the official Chinese news agency. And he pointed out that 90% of Russian Chinese trade is carried out in local currencies. Now, Alex was disgusted. That's what that means. But suffice to say, not the dollar, not the euro. It is very clear about this. So, outside Western currencies, outside the global financial system. And clearly, this is what they're going to be talking about. The fact that transactions, our system of transactions, has to be sorted out. And of course, they each side has to make sure that the sections, the parts of the economy, that in each country, the trades with the other, is becoming sanction proof. Because the United States is now already threatening to sanction Chinese banks. It's already made specific threats to Chinese banks that undertake financial transactions with Russia. It's trying to stop circulation of the Russian Mircard, which is Russia's own financial card, comparable to Mastercard and Visa. And, well, the Chinese clearly want to continue to trade with Russia. They made it absolutely clear in a summit meeting. They just, in a series of summit meetings, they just had with Tony Blinken in Beijing with Macron and Ursula von der Leyen in France. So, you have to find work rounds, or if not, perhaps work rounds, something more ambitious. So a lot is going on. And it's not just involving China and Russia. It's clearly now bringing in other countries. The United States, even as I'm speaking, is complaining about Cambodia, developing links with China, little Cambodia. They're worried about that. They're worried about all sorts of other places. So, Alex, what is going on? Well, I think that what is going on is a massive discontinuity from the system that we all came to take for granted for during our lifetimes. But the system that has a continuity of growth that we could call it 500 years, or we could call it 3000 years almost. And this is coming to an end. And just to give it a proper perspective to what it is and how the empire perceives it, I wanted to read a passage from Howford Mackinders. In 1904, seminal paper about the global pivot, right? So here it is, the paragraph. The spaces within the Russian Empire and Mongolia, recall this is this was written and published in 1904. The spaces within the Russian Empire and Mongolia are so vast. And their potentiality is in population, wheat, cotton, fuel, and metals so incalculably great that it is inevitable that a vast economic world, more or less apart, will develop inaccessible to oceanic commerce. In the world at large, Russia occupies the central strategic position held by Germany in Europe. She can strike on all sides, save the north. The full development of her modern railway mobility is merely a matter of time. The over setting of the balance of power in favor of the pivot state, resulting in its expansion over the marginal lands of Eurasia, would permit of the use of vast continental resources for fleet building, and the empire of the world would then be in sight. This might happen if Germany were to ally itself with Russia. Okay, so I think that what Mackinder couldn't have predicted is the alliance between Russia and China because they were deathly afraid. The imperial establishment were deathly afraid of the alliance between Germany and Russia. They didn't foresee the alliance between China and Russia, and Mackinder did write about the emergence of China. In their own kind of, we should call it racist way, they only thought that China could become a factor in world affairs if it were organized by the Japanese. If China were ever to be organized by the Japanese, it might become a player in that area. But this fear of Russia emerging as a power, and the Eurasia developing its economic potential independent of the then British today, American empire was the primal fear of the imperial establishment for more than 100 years now. And so now we see exactly that happening. And so it also explains the reactions of the American establishment. They want to be the hub of everything. They want all the lines of commerce and all the lines of payments to go through New York. And now you know like if Iran builds a pipeline to Pakistan, they, they're in a tizzy if Cambodia develops its own trade relations with other countries. They want to sabotage and disable all of this, but you know it's, I think that their efforts are a mind amounting kind of like king canoe, flogging the waves to stand the tide. It's too big. It's too strong. It's too robust. You cannot stop it. You cannot reverse it. I think that the Western powers, including the United States would do much, much better if they just simply joined these integration processes as a, as a trading partner, because it's a massive market. We see that, you know, these developments are putting something like 100 million affluent consumers on the markets every year. That's, that's huge. So that's a huge market that you can sell to if you have something to sell if you produce goods and services. Rather than trying to kneecap them, you know, the Tonya Harding approach to, to competition, they should simply, they, you know, Western Western nations have a lot to offer in trade. So they should just trade with them rather than always sabotaging trying to censor them and trying to disable these developments. But, you know, unfortunately, nobody asked me. So we'll see how it goes. You're absolutely correct. Now, yesterday as it happens, I was talking to a person, a Chinese person. And you made the point that in fact what's now happening is that the major export of the United States is increasingly becoming sanctions because they're sanctioning everybody all the time in the most having that other sanctioning Georgia. The sanctioning Cambodia would see the sanctioning India, which was their friend. India is, you know, building pipelines and things with Iran, but they want to sanction India to or threatening to the sanctioning absolutely everybody everything that moves outside their own area of control. They're trying to sanction. And it's, there is a kind of frenetic, almost one almost can say irrational quality about it. Now, the Chinese did not know very much about McKinsey. I think it's fair to say until a short time ago, they're now becoming much more aware that these ideas exist in the West. The Russians, of course, have known about Mckinder for a very long time, going all the way back to when his work was published in the early 20th century. And of course, that period of time is actually quite interesting because the Russians at that time had just completed work on the Trans-Siberian railway. So you can see the concerns about railways. They were also, at that precise time, occupying Northern Manchuria, their army had advanced into this part of Northern China. At the time of the Boxer rebellion, well, it's not a rebellion, but we'll call it that, the Boxer crisis in China just a few years before. And of course, the British were very alarmed about all of this. And 1904 is an important year also because this is the year when the Russo-Japanese war begins. And of course, Japan at that time was very much an ally of Britain. And partly, in fact, principally, and I've read an unpublished PhD thesis on this whole issue, unpublished, I think, for a reason. A lot of the ideas about what caused the Russo-Japanese war are completely wrong. It's widely assumed it was about a conflict over Korea. In fact, the key issue was Manchuria and the Russian presence there. Now, the great irony of it was that the Russians had actually decided to withdraw from Manchuria. They made an independent decision quite unrelated to what the British were concerned about, what the Japanese were concerned about, which was to pull out of Manchuria because they wanted to build better relations with the Chinese government in Beijing. So, you know, it was all, again, another scare about nothing. But it led to the first of a series of wars, which began with the Russo-Japanese war and then eventually culminated in the first world war and a century of crisis, which in some respects is what we've had over that whole time. And of course, that period of crisis stopped this whole process of Eurasian development. And in 1904, by the way, if you go to Russia at that time, you will find lots of people starting to talk about Eurasianism. The Russian ambassador to Japan, for example, was a major advocate of Eurasianism. Anyway, this whole process was stopped for a whole century. And then, of course, it's now resuming with the vengeance. And just to finish a little bit of this history, if you also read H.G. Wells' book, The War in the Air, which was also published at around this time, a bit later. It's all about, ultimately, a Chinese-Japanese attempt to conquer the world. And importantly, it's achieved through China, Japan, conquering China, and developing Chinese resources in exactly the way that you've described. You see how all of these imperial fears and fantasies of that period are being resurrected today. In that period, the attempt to prevent them developing led ultimately to a catastrophe, a catastrophe from which, in my opinion, Europe has never recovered. The Anglo-Americans did quite well out of it, but Europe itself was devastated and has never regained its pivotal position that it had had up to that time. But now, of course, it's happening all over again. In completely different conditions, China is very strong, India is becoming stronger, Russia is recovering, and they're all talking to each other. So, I just wanted to give this brief historical plan, fleshing out some of the points you made. Shall we discuss how all of this is going to work? Because, Nabulina and Siluana for technical people, they understand monetary policies, they understand financing. I mean, they're very good at that sort of thing. I don't know the Chinese opposite numbers, but I am absolutely sure that they're at least as competent in their own fields. What are they planning? What are they working towards setting up? We have an important meeting of the BRICS coming up in Kazan, in Russia, I believe in August. But what are they working towards doing? How is it going to work? I think that the changes could be so radical that we're going to have to use our imaginations, because we have been operating under a certain matrix, under certain economic theories and theories of society and economy for so long that we can't quite grasp what is possible outside of these theories. And the core problem here is one of the core problems is the monetary system. And our monetary system has evolved in order to serve an imperial oligarchy establishment that is always centered around the banking cartels around the dominant banking institutions. And so the theories have evolved in order to support this type of arrangement. Once we consider other possibilities, we are truly in uncharted territories. And it seems to me that the Chinese and the Russians, I know this for a fact about the Russians, they have gone quite far out to explore and theorize and examine other kinds of social arrangements that become possible. And one of the problems that we have, which is a nice problem to have, is that our societies, our advanced industrial societies, are absolutely phenomenally productive. We generate a huge amount of surplus. Now how do you deal with that? You know, you have to use that surplus in some way reinvested into further productive endeavors and infrastructure. And in the West, we've kind of by inertia, we've always defaulted into heavy industries and from there to military industrial complex, and from there to waging wars, because this is one of the effective ways of destroying the surplus. The best part of the strategy has always been to keep the population, kind of, you know, at the edge of poverty, and there's been, you know, there's been periods of, of greater prosperity, but generally, throughout history. The inertia of the system has been to oppress the masses and to push them back into poverty, you know, things that Charles Dickens described about Victorian England, that Upton Sinclair described about the United States in the, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. And this is pretty much the way it has always been, and we can see those tendencies return after, you know, after a relatively benign post-war period where people, you know, won certain rights and privileges and more reasonable living conditions. But now it's all going back towards Victorian times, again, you know, crushing poverty for the masses and a very narrow class, because, you know, they absorbed the society's surplus wealth. And I think that now the Russians and the Chinese are opting for a very different model of development, and it is, in the Chinese case, very obvious to their, in their track record of their development, that they have been lifting people by the hundreds of millions out of poverty. And they're making their nation, a nation of affluent consumers, and something like, basically about two thirds of Chinese growth domestic product is being reinvested into the nation's capital stock. So we have about two thirds of the GDPs in the capital investment in the capital stock, around 60%, while maybe only something less than 30% is consumption. And when you invest in capital stock, you're making your society ever more productive. And the surplus is such that you can afford blunders, you can afford errors, you can afford to generate the whole economic ecosystem and then raise it to the ground, which we see with the real estate development in China, without really destabilizing the system as a whole. And so I think that these are, you know, these are problems that need to be strategized at the national level, you know, do we, are we going to build pyramids, are we going to build cathedrals, are we going to, are we going to go to war, are we going to wage endless wars like the Western countries are. This has to be discussed and there has to be a strategy, and there has to be a vision. And it is completely appropriate for the heads of national banks and heads of governments to get together to talk these things out, to compare notes, and to formulate that vision. Absolutely, just a few quick observations, of course the West is bitterly complains all the time, and at the same time criticizes the fact that China Rover invests, as they put it, they say that the Chinese have this habit of over investing in their economy, they need to reduce investment. This is something that is quite strange, but they say this all the time. And of course now, recently, they've started to complain about Chinese overcapacity, that the Chinese are becoming over productive. And this is becoming a theme that has been taken off by Macron, by Blinken, by Ursula von der Leyen, by the British government, by absolutely everybody. So they want the Chinese to stop investing, it's not clear what the Chinese are supposed to do, they're not investing. But they're supposed to stop investing. Well actually, we do know, they have to increase consumer spending, which basically means buying more from the Western countries and balance out trade and do those sorts of things. Anyway, that is one observation I would make. Now there's another observation, which is, again, as somebody who worked, you know, not in a major way, but did work in industrial practice for quite a long time, in the past. One of the things you understand when you're in it, when you do have any contact with the industrial manufacturing issues, and especially investment in them, is that planning is essential. Now then, you know, planning has to be long term. Now in the West, I don't know whether this is so in the United States and much, but certainly in Britain, planning has become an almost, you know, it's become a dirty word. You don't talk about it. You don't speak about it anymore. But of course, the Chinese have always been into planning on a big scale. The Russians used to do planning big, then they sort of stopped doing it in the 1990s. What I think people have not been aware of is that gradually over the last 10 years or so, and recently, very quickly, they are reverting to planning systems again, different from the ones they had previously, but they are going in for planning systems. So if we talk about Belosov, who is now the defence minister, there's been a very interesting meeting, by the way, about two meetings that he attended in Moscow with Putin yesterday. The point about Belosov is he's a planner. He's not exactly an economist. He's entire background, both in the late Soviet era. And since then, has been in long range industrial planning. And the person who's now taking his place as first deputy prime minister is a young man, much younger man, Manturov, who is also from the industry side, and also is concerned about planning. And the Russians are returning to planning in a big way. It is not the kind of planning the Soviet Union used to do, whether they could control the price of everything and said what every factory had to make. But it is planning that involves building infrastructure. There is a very ambitious infrastructure program now. And of course, planning in developing particular sectors. And I should say that I have read a summary of the Russian plan for developing their electronics and microprocessors and semiconductor industries. And it's interesting and very clearly laid out, thought through, by the way, very different from the planning we get in the United States. And I noticed by the way that the lead company in it is actually Rossaton, the nuclear power engineering complex, not Rostek, which I thought that it might be. And there are probably reasons for that, which I'm not going to try and explore. But anyway, we are looking at planning structures being being built. The Chinese already have them. The Russians are recreating them. And of course, they're tying together as well. So do you want to talk a bit about planning and what it is and why we're not talking about the return to Stalinist era, you know, directive planning in exactly that kind of way, which neither the Chinese don't do anymore. And have them done for a long time. And the Russians, of course, are reverting to either. Well, I know that the Russians have created and they're planning massive investments into what is the Russian equivalent of the American Silicon Valley, which, you know, itself was a development catalyzed by their own defense establishment and their military industrial complex. And I think that the vision is that very often these military development end up having extremely interesting civilian applications. And so, you know, the Russians are planning massive investments into new scientific developments into new research. Vladimir Putin himself has intimated developments in the completely new principles. A principle development is based on the completely new principles of physics that are as as of yet have been undiscovered and undeveloped. And who knows who knows I don't know where this is all going, but I see that this is the general direction in which these societies are taking their development and I wouldn't be surprised if Chinese and the Russians together won't have very considerable space programs announcing, possibly defending the earth against asteroids, you know, developing ways to blow up asteroids approaching the earth. Because this is a this is actually a real, a real concern if you listen to people like Graham Hancock and people like that there has been in Earth's history. Examples were an asteroid almost completely decimated life on earth and this could happen again. I suppose there's going to be large investment into into arts and not only sciences but also arts industrial development infrastructure. And I believe that with the passage of time over the long term, this cooperation between Russia and China is unbreakable and there are strategic reasons why they are unbreakable. But I think that they're going to lead to a new chapter in the history of humanity where we're going to find that, you know, we have, you know, the birthright that we enjoy on this planet should enjoy such staggering levels of prosperity and potentialities and opportunities and options that it's going to be extraordinarily interesting. Now, you know, there's a there's a side to this whole equation that is going to do absolutely everything they can to joke this to sabotage it and to make sure that it doesn't happen. But at the moment they're on the losing side whether they have ways to destroy it I don't know because you know it's it's always easier to destroy things than to build them. And they're actively trying to destroy them and we see it in the in the actions of Macron and also of underlying and everybody. They're being ignored as a nuisance at the moment but you know we shouldn't we shouldn't underestimate them. We shouldn't underestimate their ability to sabotage this process but even if they do I think all they will do is maybe cause setbacks. I don't think that they will be able to reverse it and to bring the system back to, you know, the privileges that the West enjoyed in the past. So I think that from our side it's time to start paying attention because there's going to be a lot of news things that we're not even prepared to to understand. We should pay attention. Absolutely just again a few quick observations one of the meetings that I talked about which fellows have attended and which Putin also attended which took place yesterday. Were specifically was specifically about harnessing the technological leap that is going on within the military industrial sector to benefit the civilian economy. And Putin pointed out that bellos is precisely the best person to do that and that's one of the key reasons he's been made defense minister. There's quite an interesting quite an interesting thing. Now, you know, let's just talk about the West because of course the West as you correctly say they don't seem to have the imagination to see the benefits of this. They see only threats in it. They're becoming increasingly angry. And I'm really alarmed by how angry some people are becoming. And the obvious way that you could smash and wreck things because sanctions are losing their effectiveness is by starting wars. And we've already got a big one underway in Europe. But is that I mean, my own feeling my strong feeling is that the most likely response that they're going to do make have to all of this is to actually intensify and accelerate the process of wars. And if you listen to a watch actually you know congressional committee meetings when they talk about China specifically. They're actually talking almost now about starting wars with China in some way or form and trying to build alliances against China in the Pacific area. I mean, it is very, very concerning indeed. But I mean, do you agree with me that this is this is perhaps the most likely course that they're going to make, especially as they come to understand that their sanctions weapon which they once thought was overwhelming just isn't working anymore. Yes, well, there's no question about it. You know, we had, we had a testimony from the American politician got her name green. Marjorie Taylor green. Thank you. I've blanked out. So Marjorie Taylor green a few, a few months ago, she was giving an interview, I think, to Tucker Carlson in which she said that the people in US Congress are absolutely talking with certainty that they're going to war against China. And David she even gave a gave a time friend 2025. Like there's, they're not, they're not talking about this as maybe, you know, this could happen if we, you know, if in the worst case scenario not there. It's as though the decision has already been made. And I think that the Chinese are very, very much aware of this, obviously they're paying attention. And I think that this is the reason why the Chinese Russian Alliance is unbreakable because, you know, if you look at the history of the last 10 years, the way the West has kind of fashioned the whole of Ukraine society into a bludgeon to use against Russia. So if they managed to install, let's say in to weaken Russia and to pull off some kind of a color revolution or a regime change operation and installed some new Navalny, you know, Karamwurza or, you know, another version of Boris Yeltsin in power. If you could then, you know, infiltrate Russia back again and then use Russia as a bludgeon against China. There are synophobic elements in Russian society today as well. You know, you take over the media and you amplify those. You know, you find your pretext date. They've never, they've never failed on finding pretext for wars. So this is where I think that the Chinese are very well aware that they have to go it all the way with Russia. And that also tells you that they have to take their strategy all the way, meaning they can't just round off the Eurasian continent, you know, pacify things in Ukraine and leave it at that because the West is going to continue to try to attack to sabotage to make their life miserable in whichever way they can, and there's no shortage of those ways. So I think that they will have to continue to push against the West and to probably completely disenfranchise the ruling establishments that are now, you know, in power in London and Washington and other European capitalists and, you know, help us find a real democracy or whichever form of government is going to allow us to, you know, have peace stability and to join these Eurasian integrations and build new prosperity for ourselves I mean, quick up for your quick observations. War against China is not what people in Europe want, I don't think it's what people, most people in America want, and it's not, you know, in any way again to solve growing problems, which are very visible on our streets, in all our cities, it's going to make those problems worse. This is a plan to try to sort of, you know, reverse history, which is causing enormous damage and destruction to Western societies. And as I always point out to people, I live in the capital of the previous empire, the British Empire, and I could see every day the damage that being an imperial state caused to Britain I mean, at the time, it did provide enormous benefits, but those benefits increasingly became concentrated in an ever smaller group of people, the rest of the people began to bear the burdens And one effect of being an imperial state was that because Britain essentially traded with its empire and made sure that the parts of its empire didn't develop economically, the British economy didn't develop So, when I was doing all that industrial work that I was talking about, in the 1980s, I found to my astonishment that a lot of British industry was an industrial museum, you could find machine tools that dated And I am not exaggerating about this, this isn't the 1980s mind. So, you know, empire is a very bad thing for most people, nobody discusses this as I thought as I can see, I mean, a few people do, I mean, on our media channels But most people don't talk about this, they don't understand the economics of empire and its enormous burdens Yes, that is exactly right, I would call it the empires do two things, they create misery at home and mayhem abroad, always have done And, you know, even from 2000 years time distance, you know, what do we know about the Roman Empire, we see the ruins of the Roman Empire and they seem very impressive But Rome, as the imperial city, was absolutely surrounded by slums, people were living in misery and the processes that we see today in Britain and the United States where the cities are falling apart, where people are sleeping in the streets Or falling over with drug overdoses in the streets, and everything seems to be falling apart, is exactly the kind of developments that we had in the Roman Empire that we had during the, you know, 12th and 13th centuries, a Lombard banking crisis In Italian cities that we had during the Victorian era of the British Empire and that we see today, again, across Europe, Britain, and the United States and even parts of Canada, Canada is a very resource rich country But, you know, even there, you could see the symptoms of this sickness and then, you know, we talked about our leadership being, you know, out of ideas and very, very angry about losing This is the type of leadership that the Empire brings to the front, they are selected that way, and I, you know, just in the last few years, you could observe specific examples of this, not only are all our prime ministers and presidents and foreign ministers And it's not absolutely underqualified people to put it politely, but you see, you know, we just saw a few days ago, a short video of the chairman of the President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisor, Jared Bernstein And it was a short speech about how he doesn't get it, he doesn't understand the economic process, and it was absolutely staggering and then a bank of international settlements at the beginning of this month had some kind of an online innovation summit So, Jared, you all know a Harari, who managed to slip in the sentence that it is absolutely right for the government to create more and more money to build more and more trust, I mean, it's absolutely surreal, it's absolutely surreal And the people who are competent are being drawn out of this system, and I will never forget the, at the outset of the crisis in Ukraine, there was a, before the war in January 2022, there was German Admiral He was named Sean Bach, who was at a summit in India, and he said, the low cost solution to this process to this problem in Ukraine is to simply respect Russia's security concern, and to acknowledge them and to work with them to find a common solution Well, so, and he was an admiral of the German Navy, so, you know, a career, military man with certain competencies and certain reputation, that statement there ended his career that day, he tried to back pedal to distance, he didn't mean that but it was over And who comes to it in his place, people who are, you know, who are going to be willing to take the country to war, and people who are not worried about the nuances and this is where this is why I say that we shouldn't underestimate the West's capability to sabotage And to sacrifice absolutely their whole entire countries, you said Americans are not interested in going to war against China and Europeans are not interested in going to war against Russia, but the same was true for Ukraine 10 years ago And the same was true for Ukraine even two years ago, Ukrainians didn't want war with Russia, but they got it anyway, so the very same way that the establishment managed to coerce Ukraine, the whole society to go to war against Russia is the danger that we face ourselves But they lost in Ukraine, they will try to use Poland, Germany, France, Italy, whoever they can to pull the same things off, and so I think that for us in the West, again, it's time to actively do what we can to defend the peace and to say no to these developments Actually, I think a lot of people don't understand that economics and war and peace and all of these issues are inextricably interconnected with each other, if you have peace, what kinds of opportunities start to open up Or they start to shut down, and it also, if you have a sort of national security state and a situation where everybody is in a state of constant hysteria and anger about things which we seem to be in the West increasingly Then that also affects your politics in very, very negative ways, indeed, I'm going to just finish by asking one final question, the position of reserve currencies comes and goes, you know, the pairs of the Spanish pairs are used to be a reserve currency, then the Dollar became a reserve currency. It's part of nature, even nature, it's part of history, it's part of historical evolution. What we are, you said that they're trying to sort of hold things back and prevent them developing The fact that the Dollar might be replaced by a new system of, you know, financing is not in itself a dangerous thing if it's managed properly, it's not something that people in the United States ought to be afraid of It's trying to prevent these developments from taking place that is what is dangerous and ultimately impoverishing, and you could say the same about everything else, what these people want to do is to stop everything At where they, well, if I push it back a bit and then stop it, at where everything was around 1995, so it seems to be, and that's not possible, they can't be done Absolutely, and I think that the only people who should be afraid of the dollarization and the loss of dollars, reserve status are the Western banking and corporate cartels, for everybody else is going to turn out to be good news, what's going to replace the dollar, we will find out There's no obvious candidate, you know, people are talking about Petru Yuan and things like this, but it doesn't seem to me that we're going in that direction, I think that the dollar is going to remain the reserve currency for the foreseeable future By inertia, you know, people are used to it, people understand what the dollar is, if you tell them this costs so many dollars, a ton of people understand what it is worldwide, you know, not just in the United States, but all the exporting countries understand it, and that has a certain inertia, and people will kind of default to that for a long time Petru Yuan is going to have a role, but I think that we're going into, maybe into a future of multiple currencies, even in China you have a dual circulation, you have kind of like the foreign trade Yuan and you have the domestic Yuan, which have a distinct and different circulation So that, you know, the one system doesn't necessarily destabilize the other, and, you know, throughout the Middle Ages in Europe we had dual currencies, in most places, there were currencies that people used within communities and in between communities And then there was usually the legal tender in which they used to pay taxes to the sovereign, and that the sovereign used to trade with other nations, and so we might be going into that kind of a development where there's going to be multiple things that we're going to learn how to manage But that is not yet discernible, and we'll have to just pay attention and find out, but I think that for us, the number one priority is to defend the peace, because that's going to decide not so much the fate of multiple integrations, which I think are now on an irreversible track It's going to define how soon and how well we're going to be able to integrate with them for our benefit, and then we have to pay attention to the, you know, scientific and technological development, because that's where the opportunities are going to lie for all the rest of us Absolutely. Well, Alex, Alex, I'm going to finish, I'm going to stop there because we've had a wonderful conversation with each other I think this is the point where I hand over to Alex I'm sure he's got questions to put to you, Alex. Thank you. Pleasure. Alex five, five, 10 minutes answer some questions from, of course, of course, yeah, many one says question Alex wouldn't bricks rather deflate the dollar slowly, rather than completely yanking the rug out from under it. Yes, I think there's merit to that idea. You know, it's much better to gradually take over than to destabilize a system on which many of the bricks nation still largely depend. But we have to understand that the, the dollar has a massive role still in the global economy, that the IMF has a very significant influence overtly and covertly over many nations, and that many nations, including the brick member nations are very afraid of breaking their bonds with the IMF and with the with the United States. So that has to be weaned. We have to be weaned of those bonds gradually. All right, could you ask Alex, what is the deal with the West wanting to change to digital money? Is there a purpose? Well, I think that there's nothing wrong with digital money provided that you have the option of using cash. There are many advantages to digital money, meaning, you know, you can, you can manage micro payments online from anyone in the world to anyone in the world. I think that the great drive towards digital money has to do with CBDCs in the West. So there's this obsession with creating central bank issue digital currencies, which should be programmable that the ideas that they'd be programmable. In that sense, they are regarded as an instrument of control because by having programmable CBDCs, they would be able to condition your access to your money and ability to engage in transaction by, you know, your compliance with whatever they decide, you know, your, your vaccine schedule, your, you know, your, how many carbon credits you have or how much red meat you consume this week and so on. But it's largely a fantasy that's never going to come to pass and they to less than two years ago, you know, they had a big, a big test introduction in Nigeria, where they actually went forward and replaced Naira with Enaira, which was a proper CBDC. And they threw all their best resources at it, you know, they had WEF consultants there in World Bank and IMF consultants. They tried to do everything right. And the whole thing failed miserably in 108 days. It brought the country to a paralyzed, paralyzed standstill, practically almost led to a revolution. The president of the country lost the first elections and the central bank governor who was who was in charge of that project ended up in prison. And so they will have a very difficult time finding another test market for that people, you know, people noticed. And so I think that the whole thing will never be implemented. It's just going to be a lot of talk. What are your thoughts on China and plans for Hungary, Hungary and Serbia? Oh, yes, I think that's extremely interesting. Well, you see, I think a lot has to, a lot of it has to do with the Ukraine war and the status of Odessa. And then the Russian state control of Odessa, which they will one way or another, whether militarily or in some other way, you know, they have other options of taking control of Odessa, you know, not necessarily military conquest but political control of Odessa. Then they cement their control of the whole of the Black Sea coast. And the reason why this is significant is because you have the Danube flowing out to the Black Sea. In nations like Hungary, Serbia, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, they get an exit to the sea and maritime trade. So it would be much, much more difficult for the Western powers and the European Union to coerce these countries into compliance and to sanction them and to prevent them from exiting the European Union. And I think that for China, this whole connection becomes a very important part of their Belt and Road Initiative and the whole European, sorry, multiple or integrations. And so the role of China of Serbia and of Hungary could become extraordinarily important in that sense. They could be, they could be deleting regional powers to start breaking off and joining the multipolar integrations. From Mortem Rex, this may be a bit of a tangent, though almost nothing is in today's geopolitical tapestry. Quite right. Yes. But do you think the Indians are on a bit of a wobbly path, specifically with joint military exercises that only serve to further antagonize China and annoy the Russians, your thoughts on India and India's path. I think this is working progress. I think that India is still regarded by the Western powers as one of the potential. How do you call it? One of the potential nations who might who might be a major stumbling block for Chinese and Russian integration initiatives. And we saw that a few years where the trilateral commission held their first post-COVID meeting in Japan, and basically India emerged as the most likely country to be breaking the ranks. But I think that, you know, while the relationship between China and India is still difficult, the relationship between India and Russia is rock solid. And I think that Russia will be working that relationship to make sure that India stays on board. And I think that, you know, today India is being incentivized in all kinds of ways to stay on board. For example, you know, India has become a major supplier of oil to Western markets. And all of their oil is Russian oil, right? Before the war in '22, a Ukraine war, India was about 1% of Russian oil expert went to India. Today is 40%. And then, you know, India has suddenly become the major number one supplier of oil to the European markets from virtually zero two years ago. So you see how India has, India already is having very strong interest in being part of these multilateral trade agreements. And so I think that between incentives and between, you know, not wanting to become the Ukraine of Eurasia, I think that it will make sense for India to stay on board. But it is work in progress, and I think that it will take some diplomatic effort, particularly on the part of Russia, but also maybe Iran in the future to patch up those relationships. And then I think that in the same way that, you know, Russia and China have been able to overcome their adversities throughout the Cold War, I think it will be possible for China and India to overcome their adversities as well. Yeah. Can I just quickly add something to this? Because this has been an interesting twist because, of course, one of the problems that the Chinese Indian trade had was that the Indians, Indian currency, the rupee is not convertible. It's very difficult if you're paid in rupees to use them for other things. The Russians, when they started to export oil to India, suggested that India pay in Iran, in Chinese Iran. The Indians said, absolutely not. This is not something that we're going to do. So what has actually started to happen, and it's been encouraged by both governments, is that the Russians still get paid in rupees. They then invest those rupees back in India, and they invested in sectors of the Indian economy, which then export to Russia. So it's becoming a mechanism for the Russians to import various like goods, consumer goods and things like that, which India makes back to Russia. And of course, it's actually ended up by creating even more linkages because this investment from the Russians is now becoming significant, and is becoming something that is starting to also pull in more people in India, more people in India themselves becoming involved in it. So you can see how integration processes can work in all sorts of the stranger. The Americans are not happy with this. And even as India does these joint exercises, the US has now started to criticize the Modi government quite openly. And of course, it's threatened India with sanctions for all sorts of unspecified things. Yeah, very true. We'll do two more questions. Alex, is that cool? Yeah, absolutely. Mehdi once says, will the West get any common sense responsible leadership in time? I actually don't think so. I think it'll have to be a change in a change in the guards, you know, and I don't even know whether, even if Donald Trump wins in the United States, whether he will be able to drain the swamp in the way that most of us hope he would. I think that the system is too far gone. And right now, there's actually a talk in the United States, but also in France here, where I am, the leading risk going forward is actually a civil war. You know, there's people close to the French military establishment that actually think that the most likely future for France is a civil war. They say war, but not war against Russia, but a civil war. And, well, you know, it would be good to avoid that. You know, if the ruling establishments could be changed by democratic means, it would be preferable. And I think that at the moment, the only hopeful candidate would be Donald Trump. I don't know about RFK if he stands the chance of winning the elections. But I think that we will get more sober leadership after either after a change of guards, one way or the other. And for both Alex and Alexander from Sanjeva on a serious notes. What do you think about the assassination attempt on Robert Fitso didn't know these things could happen in Europe these days. I'll go quickly first, Alexander. I think you'll have a lot more to say about this, but there's a there's a long tradition of the of the Empire. And when I say Empire, I mean, you know, the current is American, but it's simply reincarnation of the undead British Empire. But there's a long tradition of assassinating people who come in the way of their Eurasian geopolitical strategy. And so Fitso wouldn't be the first one. We already know who pulled the trigger but why and who put him up to it. And maybe we'll never know. But you know, he's not the first one. And there's been many leaders who have been assassinated in the past. And I think that we shouldn't be surprised that that is a part of the part of the imperial tactics. Well, this is absolutely true. And I mean, we have had unsolved. It's not unusual. It's not unique for European leaders to be assassinated. Many of us remember Olaf Palmer, the Swedish former Swedish Prime Minister Swedish Prime Minister, when he was assassinated. That crime has never been solved. The way in which the investigation was conducted was extraordinary and almost calculated to fail to achieve an outcome, if I may say. And one can go back further still. I mean, I'm old enough to remember in the 1970s, the kidnapping and murder of the Italian politician Aldo Moro, who again, people in Italy, your former Prime Minister of Italy, people in Italy and in the United States were suspicious of for all sorts of complicated and intricate reasons, which we're not going to discuss in this program. So, you know, there have been cases like this. And of course, there have been cases of all kinds of cells and organizations created post war in Europe, the operation glad you're saying is exactly. I think on this subject, we also need to mention his name slipped my mind right now. But the former CEO of Deutsche Bank, who was assassinated, I think it was in 1989 or so. 1989. And he was precisely one who wanted, you know, after the fall of the, after the with the opening of the of the communist block, he wanted to drive to towards integrations of German economy with the with the Russian and Eastern European democracies. And so he was he was assassinated for that reason. Yes. Now, coming back to this murder, the rather this attempted murder of pizza because at the moment, thankfully, it looks like he's in recovery, and that he survived. We're still at a very early stage we don't have all the facts we the person who has who carried out the attack has been captured a fair amount is known about him. He is very much aligned with the liberal part of Slovak, politics, whether anybody put him up to do it. We'll have to wait and see what the evidence is. But I'm going to say this. Anybody who follows politics and media coverage of events in Eastern Europe cannot fail but notice the relentless abuse of leaders like pizza or or ban or virtue or whomever anywhere in Europe, the way they're talked about the way they're spoken about the atmosphere of the poisonous atmosphere that surrounds them. That in itself. And I've been concerned about this is going to create a climate where even if you don't actually deliberately organize and put somebody and give them a gun and point them in a particular direction. That climate in itself creates and is intended to create serious risks and is extremely intimidating. Now, I don't know the situation in Slovakia specifically, but I understand that there it has been absolutely off the scale. Apparently the abuse poll from the liberal political establishment at feet so and the Slovak media, which like the media all across Europe, follows the line that we all know it has apparently been completely off the scale. And, you know, it's not surprising in some ways that something like this happened. Now there have been some British commentators who have been frankly not unhappy that this event happened and who perhaps would have been even less unhappy, choosing my words very carefully, if this incident had ended in the death. I mean, I was quite astonished just to hear one particular journalist, if I could call him that on Sky News, for example, saying that under feet so Slovakia has been an unhappy country. What's the thing to say? How does he know? I mean, you know, what is the evidence or the proof of that is just one election of his political ally has just won a presidential election. There is no evidence that most people in Slovakia are unhappy. But you know, we have that kind of language, we have those kind of things said. So this is a very heavy, very dangerous atmosphere in which it is unsurprising that these sort of things happen. And I'm not saying that there wasn't some controlling hand behind this because I don't know whether there was or whether there wasn't. But given the climate that we have, even if there wasn't a controlling hand, it's not completely surprising about not surprising at all, the things like this did take place. And I'm sorry to say, it's not impossible that we're going to see more often. Yes, I just wanted to follow up. I looked up the name of the Deutsche Bank CEO who was assassinated. It was November 1989. His name was Alfred Herhausen. And I just wanted to mention that for the benefit of your viewers if they wanted to look up the story. But I think the point is that we are going back to that MacCindarian strategy where, you know, the Imperial oligarchy wants to prevent the emergence and blossoming of this economic world that is outside of their control and inaccessible to them. Excellent point. Alex Crater, thank you very much for joining us on the demand. That was a fantastic conversation. I have all you gentlemen, and greetings from Monica to your viewers and listeners. Absolutely the privilege is ours and I have all your information in the description box down below and I will add your information as a comment as well. Thank you very much Alex. Thank you. Bye bye. Take care. Bye bye. All right, Alexander. That was a great chat. Absolutely. A lot of good information there. Let's answer the remaining questions. From Sanjeva, Yippee joined the live the Ranchette after a long time. Greetings from Australia. Greetings Sanjeva, good to have you with us. Thank you as well Sanjeva for that amazing super sticker. And Ralph says, "Dear Alex and Alexander, I would like to plea for intercession in the restoration of the chat rights of John Ashley Smith so that he can keep on chatting in the free world." I guess yeah, I have to look at the chat for the user, John Ashley Smith. Ralph also says, "Dear Alexander, being a British citizen, being a citizen of the British Empire, and a member of the free world, did your heart beat louder than your eternal soul stand that much prouder when you heard Neil Blinken seeing the iconic lines of rocking in the free world?" Oh, I was absolutely overwhelmed. I took out the champagne and I was beside myself with joy and euphoria when it happened. And I have to say, it was an astonishing performance. It brought back memories of a golden time in the 1970s, especially when all kinds of rock stars and things like that were all over Britain. What they made of it, of course, in Ukraine, where they'd been bombed, shelled, killed, suffering, rolling blackouts and all of that. Well, of course, they don't quite understand the nuances and the subtleties and the splendours of this performance. I'm going against diplomacy. Yes. And Ralph did. Ralph actually put some lyrics, and now she put her kid away as she's about to get hit. She hates her life and what the Israeli bombing has done to it. There's one more kid. I'll never go to school, never get to fall in love, never get to be cool. A little change in the lyrics. Ralph keep on rocking in the free world, keep on rocking in the free world, keep on rocking in the free world. And finally, from Ralph and given Ukraine's desperate need for fighting men, why after finishing the gig at the Kia Bar wasn't Neil Blinken and the band members on the first bus from Kia heading towards Hat give the girl and personally fight for the new car. Oh, because he's directing operations from the rear, a far more heroic important thing to do. I mean, he came to the point of danger, which is Kia itself. He raised the morale of the Ukrainian people with his performance. And as I said, he's now directing operations from the rear, which is, of course, in Washington, where he plays an absolutely indispensable role. I forget. Yes, Neil Blinken. Interesting. Let's see. Lover of the Russian team, brother, it's shown with a meal. I think you remember the other day. Thank you for that. Lover of the Russian team, the black cat. Thank you for your super sticker. Jungle Jin says, is the Russian Security Council Putin's cabinet? Yes, I mean, it's not just a cabinet, because bear in mind, when Putin eventually leaves the presidency, the Security Council will still be there, and many of the people who Putin appointed will remain. It's a sort of permanent institution, but it is the key decision making body in Russia. And that is the essential thing to understand. The Security Council is the key decision making body. The executive office, which is the presidential administration, as it used to be called, is the key secretary act, where again, a lot of the decisions are sorted out and worked out and made. The council of ministers or cabinet and ministers, as it is sometimes called, the formal government is the executive body that fulfills the decisions that are made by those two of those two other bodies. It's actually a very structured government with a lot of continuity, by the way, to what existed in the Soviet era, which in turn, it may surprise people to learn, had a certain amount of continuity with what had begun to develop in the late Tsarist era. There is a sort of pattern of structure to which the Russian administrative and institutional framework, reverse, because it is adapted to Russian conditions. Tim Gibson, thank you for that super sticker, Anna and coloristian thank you for that super sticker. JF says Alexander Alex thank you for your impressive program and brilliant analysis of current affairs. Anna and coloristian says fantastic program guys. Thanks for having a meal on yesterday. Thank you. Elsa says gentlemen, sanctions were the reason why countries have developed new profitable markets if sanctions were removed. What probably will never happen with those markets still remain profitable. This is a very good question actually, I think beyond a certain point the answer is yes, you see the sanctions are created adjustments in the patterns of trade, the economy, the various economies, the global economy of those adjustments and develops to follow those adjustments, even when the sanctions are removed, the newly established trade and economic systems will continue, because they'll have achieved a quality of permanence over time. So I see the answer is yes, they will survive the sanctions, but nonetheless I agree with you, I don't think the sanctions are ever going to be formally removed. Eventually they will become irrelevant, but I don't think they will ever be formally removed. That doesn't happen in the US. Ms. Texas G says the Chinese seem to be very good at absorbing information through listening and reading in between the lines of whomever it is they are attaining so they probably read Macaron, like the New York Times because he is an emotional person and wears all information on his sleeve. Yes, absolutely. And John Carter said says in the sense of the three little pigs young countries are built with straw the US being older but still young is built of wood while the 1000 year old Russian nation is built from brick. And now this is Matthew says brilliant as always do you still think NATO and Russia will avoid out and out war after all of this surely world relations will improve. I think yes is the short answer I think they will avoid out and out war, but will they improve not for a very very long time Putin gave a very interesting interview again as the same one I mentioned to Cinquat. The Chinese used agency in which again he made it clear that a peace settlement in Ukraine can only now happen as part of the general settlement of the piece of the security system in Europe. And there is no way that the Americans and NATO are going to be prepared to negotiate about the structures of the security system in Europe. So that's makes negotiations and a general peace settlement between Russia and the West impossible to achieve for the time being. Pauli says hi the Duran the Dutch have a new cabinet that will sign off soon we're hoping for the best and thank you for all you do. It's not going to become a Stoltenberg successor in NATO interesting to say most likely or your honest of Romania. Those are the two. Those are the two interesting John Scott says Ukraine freedom won't be stopped. Thank you for that John Scott. Marco says to buttress a super chat made by a friend a few days ago absolutely agree. You wonderful gents should try and get Mr Nema out of Vini on your show. Okay, we're working on it absolutely. John Calarissian says my best regards to your bandarian brothers Johnny boy. Thank you for that animal. Elza says Alex if I may what's the blue object behind you. It's just a 2022 actually that an artist gave to me many many years ago 2022. That's that's all it is. Let's see. Marco says the ever dangerous and often fatal delusion of pursuing symbolic victories over real ones will tragically haunt the people of Ukraine for generations. Absolutely. I think that when this war is over Ukraine will awaken. I think it will and it will realize that it has been living what it has been living through going all the way back stretching all the way back to 1991 has been a nightmare. And I think you will find that Ukrainians do not want to go to sleep and reenter that nightmare again. And fractured thank you for that super chat. Odyssey and Elza says I've already seen comments in Ukrainian language. Asking the US sarcastically for song under articles which report about problems in Ukraine. I think joking aside, I think it was one of the most backhanded, miscancy, disastrous things that I see in the diplomat do. Lincoln can be called a diplomat for a very, very long time. I mean, it is incredible. It is that act alone demonstrates why Lincoln should never have been appointed a secretary of state. He does a thing like this. I mean, it shows that he does not understand what his job is. And it shows such a heartless attitude towards Ukraine this time that it really is unbelievable on my local slide stream last night. Lots of people there were comparing it to Nero fiddling one Rome birth. And that's exactly how it is. And pre-planned. I'm pre-planned. I'm so absolutely wasn't this wasn't spontaneous stuff. It was pre-planned. Yeah. And a lot of people just to finish it off and I think we've got all the questions answered. The fact that he he was playing with a left-handed guitar is the giveaway that this whole thing was was planned well in advance. Someone thought this was a good idea. No, you don't. Well, I mean, we're just really wonders. What point did they think they were making? I mean, you know, he is supposed to have gone to Kiev to raise morale. How this can possibly raise people to morale in Ukraine. I mean, I absolutely scared to me. It's it was unbelievable thing to do. And the Russian Internet is utterly mocking about it. I would say it's a power of humiliation. I think you may be right. Exactly. I mean, anyway, whatever the message it conveyed was was a terrible one. And it's it's it's something which people will remember, by the way. And when the war is over, it will be shown again and again in Ukraine. People will be reminded of it. It will never be forgotten. Absolutely. And one final question, Alexander, they just came in and we'll wrap it up from Mortem Rex Gents. Any chance of having Tom Luang go back on the show? I know you need 37 cups of coffee to keep up with him, but dude blows my mind every time. I agree about both the 32nd 37 cups or was it 38? But nonetheless, we should have him back because as you write, it was brilliant. And Marcos has sent a message Aussie Parliament just passed a bill for a digital ID today. Now due to be put to the Senate, Lord save us from bureaucratic technocrats and globalists. Yeah. Yeah. True enough. All right. That is everything. Alexander, a great show. Thank you. Absolutely. And thank you to everyone that watched us on Rockfin on Odyssey on Rumble on YouTube and on the Duran. That's locals dot com. And thank you to our awesome moderators. Peter, thank you so much, T. Jordan. Good to have you here. Zara L. Thank you as well. And I think that is everyone that was moderating. I think so. Yeah. All right. Alexander. I think we can wrap this one up. Indeed. And again, thank you to everybody who participated in this live stream is a wonderful live stream. All right, ticker. All right. All right. All right. All right.